echoblog: Swoopo is the crack cocaine of auction sites

pointer toJonah Lehrer’s post on the neurobiology of Swoopo, the auction site where you purchase a “bid” for $0.60 and then swoop in at the last second to outbid rivals by a mere $0.02 – until they swoop back in and outbid you back – ad infinitum. I tried Swoopo, and found it tedious and maddening – so clearly rigged to bleed its poor bidders dry $0.60 at a time (you have to buy bids in blocks of $24 or more). One could (and some do) rashly sink tens or hundreds of dollars into the process of bidding and then walk away with nothing. There are known to be genetic influences on an individual’s sensitivity to the magnitude of immediate vs. delayed rewards (sure some people do win a $1,300 macbook for $250 which can raise one’s expectations of such a sweet reward) but it seems Swoopo is geared to folks on the extreme right tail of the distribution here. Like most, I’d rather be outbid on ebay and salve my bruised dignity with the money I didn’t blow on a netbook computer I didn’t really need.